So Irresistible (4 page)

She wished she had someone to trust. Someone to share the burden of her responsibilities with. Someone to laugh with. But as long as her staff was determined to make her pay for her recent mistakes, she was out of luck. She’d just have to muddle through until she found a way to set things right again.

So, with that in mind, Gabriella gathered her strength and marched back into the kitchen, ready to take on any challenge....

Only to learn that everyone else had sneaked out early, leaving her to finish the cleanup and closure alone. Again.

 

 

Gabriella was stowing her things in her metal employee locker when she heard the walk-in refrigerator door bang shut.

As far as she knew, everyone else was gone. She’d shut down Campania on her own. Although the delicious aromas of basil and tomatoes still lingered in the air, everything was quiet.

Except for that slamming walk-in door.

Instantly alert, Gabriella wheeled around. Her heart leaped to her throat as she surveyed the shadowy walkway between the employee break room and the rear of the pizzeria’s kitchen, where the storage areas and her office were. Footsteps sounded.

In the shadows, something moved. It came closer.

It was Adam, the hapless new guy. Grimy with spilled mop water, splashes of tomato sauce, and debris from the rubberized floor mats he’d sprayed clean, he headed for his locker.

He glimpsed Gabriella and shrieked like a scared monkey.

She couldn’t help laughing. “It’s only me.” She touched his arm to calm him down. “Sorry to scare you. Are you okay?”

“Uh, yeah.” Adam looked behind him. “I was just putting away some stuff in the walk-in. It’s been a long day.”

“Tell me about it.” At least the new guy didn’t appear to resent her. Gabriella found that bolstering. Despite her invitation to talk, though, Adam remained politely silent.

She was
dying
for some friendly interaction.

Sometimes she intimidated people. Maybe this was one of those times. “No, seriously.” She nudged him. “Tell me about it.”

Adam laughed. “Actually, I was just cooling off in there.” He ducked his head. “It’s hot work hosing off the floor mats.”

“You’ve got that right. Ugh! You feel so gross afterward, too. I’m not even sure what half the stuff stuck in there is.”

His gaze sharpened. “
You’ve
hosed off the floor mats?”

“I’ve done everything in this place, from mopping to emptying the grease traps. Nepotism didn’t get me this gig.”

“Really? That’s not what Bowser says.”

“Yeah, well . . . Bowser says a lot of things.” Gabriella watched Adam adjust the sweaty bandanna on his head. The poor guy needed more time in the refrigerated walk-in. During the heat of service, pizzeria kitchens were infernos. She took pity on him. “You can’t believe everything you hear, Frosty.”

“I guess not. I’m not usually so gullible, but—” He broke off, seeming not so secretly thrilled. “Was that . . . a nickname?”

“Damn straight, it was. You’ve officially been christened.” Gabriella retrieved her purse from her locker. She caught a glimpse of her after-hours black cocktail dress hanging there—practically growing cobwebs, it was so disused—and had an idea. The time for waiting around was over with. She was seizing control. “Aren’t you going out for after-work drinks?”

“Yeah. I’m just running late.” Frosty hooked a thumb toward the door. “I told everyone I’d meet them at the brewpub.”

He named the place, a frequent hangout of restaurant industry types. It was just down the street. It was
perfect
.

Until now, it had also been a secret. At least from her.

Gabriella had tried showing up at a few industry haunts after hours, hoping to serendipitously “run into” everyone. She needed to mend fences with her staff and neglected friends. So far, they’d eluded her. This was just the break she needed.

Thank you, new guy
. No one else would have let slip the information about where after-hours drinks were happening.

“Well, maybe I’ll see you there.” Stifling a sudden spurt of excitement, Gabriella grabbed her dress. Affecting coolness, she headed for her tiny back-of-house office, where she kept a spare pair of heels. Although she came to work in civvies, a pair of jeans and a T-shirt—plus pink high-tops—weren’t exactly going-out clothes. “Otherwise, see you tomorrow, Frosty!”

His grateful gaze followed her. “Thanks! See you later.”

With that, Gabriella was on her way. She’d even done a good deed by relieving Adam of his non-nicknamed status, too. It was hard enough being a newbie. At least now “Frosty” had the boss on his side. Plus, that meant
she
had an ally, too.

It wasn’t much, but it was a start. She’d take it.

 

Gabriella would have been the first to admit that crashing her own staff’s after-hours drinks party wasn’t the world’s most solid idea. But it was all she had. So she went for it.

“Pinkie!” Just as though it were the old (better) days, Gabriella rushed over to her friend. She wisely didn’t try for another hug. “Wow! I’m so psyched to run into you here.”

“Hey, boss.” Semisuspiciously, Pinkie nodded. “I didn’t think you knew where after-work drinks were happening these days. You know, given that you’ve been out of town, and all.”

“Yeah.” On a bar stool, Emeril scowled. “Out of town.”

“Gallivanting with another crew in Astoria,” Scooter accused from the next bar stool, gripping a bottle of his preferred IPA. “Cheating on us with a bunch of strangers.”

Gabriella sighed. “It was a coffeehouse, not a pizzeria!” she explained at a near shout to be heard over the thumping music. For the umpteenth time, she added, “I didn’t
want
to leave. But my dad didn’t want my ideas for revamping Campania, and I didn’t want to work for someone who didn’t respect me.”

It was the short-order version of what had happened. No nuance, but no teary-eyed drama, either. It was enough. For now.

However much Gabriella wanted to defend herself and her unwanted estrangement from her dad, tonight wasn’t the time.

“Save the sob story for someone who cares.” Bowser shouldered into the space between her and Pinkie, correctly identifying the weakest link in their freeze-out-Gabriella chain. “’Cause we
don’t
care. Not anymore. Not ever again.”

“Well. That lays it on the line, Bowser. I respect that.”

“Damn right you do.” He slugged back some oatmeal stout, then wiped his mouth with his tattooed hand. “Leaving yet?”

She shook her head. “Not yet. I don’t scare easily.”

Grudgingly, he nodded. “I’m still not buying you a beer.”

Gabriella hefted her porter. “I already bought my own.”

“Be sure to wipe off the bottle!” Hypo got into their conversation, glancing up from the medical app on his phone. “Bottles are very germy. You can get listeria. Or mono.”

“Shut up, you hypochondriac.” Pinkie gave him a good-natured push. She nodded at the barkeep. “One more over here.”

Between the shoving, the teasing, and the necessarily close quarters in the crowded brewpub, it felt almost like old times.

At least it did until a while later, when Jeremy arrived.

Drink in hand, he made it a priority to glare at Gabriella. “I thought we weren’t telling
her
where we were going.”

“We weren’t.” Jennifer stepped up with Adam by her side. She pointed at her linebacker-size date. “But Frosty here
did
.”

Everyone groaned. Expletives were shouted. So were ribald accusations of a hookup between Jennifer and Frosty. They both blushed, making their newfound alliance obvious. Impromptu relationships blossomed among Gabriella’s people, especially after hours. Just like badgering did. At any time of day.

“You couldn’t keep me away from after-work drinks forever,” Gabriella said. “You guys
know
me. I’m not giving up. Not ever.”

Their conspicuous glares argued otherwise.

Oh yeah
. To them, her retreat to Astoria looked like giving up. Well, they didn’t know the whole story. She wasn’t telling it tonight, either. She was too tired, too stressed, too . . .

. . .
distracted
by the guy at the other end of the bar.
Whoa
.

For at least a minute, while her tattooed and multiply pierced coworkers razzed Frosty about (a) his telling Gabriella where the after-work drinks were happening, (b) the origins of his new nickname, and (c) his unbelievable good luck in snaring Jennifer for the night, Gabriella only stared at the newcomer.

Somehow, he didn’t look like anyone else in the place. For one thing, he wasn’t sporting a chin full of hipster facial hair. That was a dead giveaway of a non-Portlander male. For another, he didn’t seem affiliated with any particular group of boisterous lifers in the foodservice biz. He appeared decidedly on his own.

Most interestingly, he wasn’t glaring at Gabriella. He wasn’t sulking over an irreversible decision she’d made. He wasn’t waiting for her to disappoint him. Instead, he was just sitting there at the end of the brewpub’s bar, looking tall, dark, and ridiculously handsome, from his broad shoulders to his vintage T-shirt–covered chest to his laundered, beat-up jeans.

Ordinarily, Gabriella didn’t go for the clean-but-scruffy type. She liked her men polished, ambitious, and articulate. She liked her men in suits and ties, taking charge and taking names.

But something about him seemed particularly compelling.

Maybe it was his hands. They looked deft and limber as he lifted his bottle of Black Butte Porter—the same brand Gabriella favored—to his mouth. Or maybe it was his lips. They looked full and sensual and wonderfully capable of kissing someone into
not
cataloguing his better qualities for half the night. Or maybe, Gabriella mused, it was all of him. Because she liked what she saw . . . and her body reacted to that, completely without her say-so.

All on its own, her heartbeat sped up. Her knees went weak. Her mouth went dry—but the rest of her felt juicier than ever.

In a rush, every feel-good impulse Gabriella had stifled since returning to Portland flowed over her, making the idea of getting to know Mr. Mysterious sound like an unmissable item on tonight’s decadent to-do list. Not to exaggerate the point, but he looked like sex appeal on steroids. His laughter carried across the brewpub. And when he smiled at a flirtatious woman who’d stopped to talk to him—shaking his head in a friendly denial of whatever she’d asked from him—he looked . . .
incredible
.

Yes, the rest of him was good.
Really
good. But packaged with that killer smile of his? He was downright amazing.

Gabriella had to know more.

She leaned toward Pinkie. “Hey. Who’s that guy?”

Her friend peered down the bar. She did a double take. “Damn! I don’t know, but my ladyparts and I want to find out.”

At her friend’s bug-eyed, lascivious expression, Gabriella laughed. “No way. I saw him first. He’s mine.”

After the tough week she’d had, Gabriella figured she deserved him. She deserved to treat herself. So she pushed away from the bar, smoothed down her dress, and headed over to make his acquaintance the same way she did everything else in life.

Straightforwardly. Boldly. With no holds barred.

It was past time to blow off some steam, Gabriella decided—and Mr. Mysterious looked like just the man to do it with.

At the same moment that Shane stood, the woman he’d been watching across the brewpub got up from her bar stool, smoothed down her sexy black dress, and headed straight toward him.

They were on a collision course.

That was exactly the way Shane liked it. Because the reason he’d stood was so he could get to know the pixie-haired hottie with the skimpy dress and the straightforward way of looking at him. Apparently, great minds
did
think alike.

Because if she wanted to get to know him, too . . .

Well, all the better. Especially on a night like tonight, when Shane was looking to knock a little wildness out of his system. Ms. Black Dress looked like just the woman to do it with. She had a way of sashaying through the crowded brewpub that suggested she knew what she wanted
and
how to get it. On her, he found that sense of certainty ridiculously intriguing.

Not that Shane was interested only in her aura of confidence. He liked the way she looked, too. She wore that slip of a dress as easily as another woman would have worn a T-shirt and jeans. She was tall but lithe, cute but cocky, and the sway of her hips nearly mesmerized him as she came closer.

Heads turned as she maneuvered through the crowd. She didn’t notice the attention. Her gaze was fixed on Shane—and so was her smile, which began as she glimpsed his own forward motion and only widened as the gap between them closed. He was struck with a sudden urge to kiss away that smile, to delve his hand in her hair and haul her up against him . . . to tickle her and make her laugh out loud, so he’d know how her laughter sounded.

Dumbstruck by that absurd urge, Shane stopped. What the hell was wrong with him? He was about to come face-to-face with the sexiest, savviest, most self-assured woman in the place . . . and he was wondering what she would sound like when laughing?

Next, he’d be wondering what she looked like first thing in the morning, with sleepy eyes and bedhead hair. Or imagining how she’d feel against him while hugging her hello. Or picturing what she’d look like on laundry day, wearing a ratty tank top and baggy sweatpants, her pert face bare and her hair a mess . . .

In a heartbeat, Shane did all those things—plus envisioning Ms. Black Dress red-nosed and blotchy with the sniffles—and he still couldn’t cross the brewpub fast enough to reach her.

Evidently, whatever long-suppressed domestic impulses he had squashed inside him were coming to the fore. All at once.

On the other hand, no other woman had had this effect on him. No other woman had led him to contemplate how she’d sneeze.

Feeling off balance, Shane finally reached her. Up close, she took his breath away. Her eyes were dark and intoxicating. Brown, if he didn’t miss his guess. Her skin was like porcelain. Her features were lively, her body was near, and for all he knew, they were meant to meet this way. It felt as if they were.

She gave him a wide, cocksure smile. “I’ll buy you a drink if you can accurately guess my bra size.”

Automatically, Shane’s gaze dropped to her chest. Until now, it occurred to him, he hadn’t even studied her cleavage. He’d been too bedazzled by the rest of her—by the whole of her.

“I can’t,” he confessed as people pushed by them. “That would mean looking away from the rest of you for too long.” He shrugged, then raised his gaze to her face. He loved the I-dare-you jut of her chin. “I like doing that too much to stop.”

“Wow. You’re the first man who hasn’t taken that bait.”

“I like to think I’m one of a kind.”

“I’m inclined to agree.” Her approving gaze swept over him, taking in his semi-incognito T-shirt and jeans—and, very evidently, the musculature beneath. “You look unique to me.”

“Everyone’s unique.” Shane didn’t understand why he found her so appealing. Usually, he didn’t go for the high-heels-and-skimpy-dress type. He liked women who didn’t need girly froufrou gear to feel sexy. He liked women who favored jeans and sneakers, wind-tossed hair, bare lips, and fast getaways. But she was a major exception to his usual yen. “You, for instance, caught my eye right away with your uniqueness.”

“Aha. You came over here to flirt with my
character
.” She raised her bottle of porter to her lips, then swallowed. She nodded, smiling at him in a way that made him woozy. “I have to say, that’s a new one. What do you like about my inner being?”

“So far? Your smart mouth is at the top of the list.”

She laughed. “Wait till you get a load of my punctuality.”

“No way.” Shane pantomimed clutching his heart. He smiled at her. “I’m a sucker for promptness. We’re a perfect match.”

For an instant, that preposterous statement lingered in the air, buffeted by the raucous sounds of the brewpub. Then . . .

“Well. We can’t know
that
yet, can we?” she asked.

But something in her eyes suggested they could. Something in her unaffected, wholly genuine, in-your-face,
interested
expression suggested they
were
a perfect match. Shane wasn’t the only one who’d sensed it. He felt unreasonably buoyed by that.

Maybe getting crazy for tonight was the right thing to do.

“We won’t know until we try.” He offered her his non-porter-holding hand and his most sincere hopes. “I’m Shane Maresca.”

A moment passed while she examined him, her posture as elegant as a brewpub-going ballerina’s. Ludicrously, Shane had the impression she might be able to see through his for-one-night casual jeans-and-T-shirt look to the real man beneath.

To the real man, who was alone and discontent and—since glimpsing
her
across the brewpub—nonsensically hopeful, too.

“I’m Gabby—” She broke off, shifted her gaze sideways, then went on. “Vivaldi. You must be new in town, or you’d recognize me, just like the rest of these—” Another break. “People.”

At that, all Shane’s years of “fixing” pinged him like crazy. Gabby “Vivaldi” was lying. Not just about her last name—which had obviously been a fake—but also about what she’d been about to call the other brewpub patrons. Peering more closely at her, Shane wondered exactly what she’d been about to say.

Just like the rest of these . . .
what
? Or
who
?

He’d chosen this place because it was unruly enough to get lost in and crowded enough to be anonymous while he was there.

Maybe Gabby “Vivaldi” had done the same thing. But Shane couldn’t shake the feeling there was more to this story. Why, precisely, would she be recognizable to the whole crowd?

He never had a chance to decide. Because next Gabby clasped his hand in hers, accepting his handshake, and his brainpower cratered to an all-time low. At the feel of her warm hand in his, all Shane wanted was to touch her some more. All over.

He wanted to touch her and feel her tremble in his arms. He wanted to slip off that dress of hers, inhale the vaguely spicy tomato-and-basil scent of her hair, and press himself against her until all that remained between them was heat and intensity.

At their touch, something electric passed between them—something unstoppable. He felt it. So did she, because her eyes widened. She stared at their linked hands. That’s when, Shane figured, any reasonable woman would have backed down.

He didn’t intend to give her a chance to do so. After all, he liked her. And he was here to be completely spontaneous.

“There’s a quiet corner over there.” He aimed his porter bottle toward a cushy, out-of-the-way booth. “Let’s start now.”

“Start what?”

“Getting to know if we’re a perfect match.”

“I was only joking!” Her hand still remained in his, but she resisted his tug toward the booth. Her gaze swept up to his face. “There’s no such thing as a perfect match.”

“Not until now, there hasn’t been,” Shane agreed.

Her mouth opened. Delectably. “You don’t believe that.”

Hmm. She’d spied his inherent cynicism and called him on it. Damn. He was impressed. Gabby “Vivaldi” just might be his dream girl. “Tonight? I
do
believe in perfect matches tonight.”

That was the name of the game, wasn’t it? To cut loose for one night? To feel . . .
everything
? Encouragingly, he nodded.

But she shook her head. “That corner booth is only available with a reservation. See? It’s already full. You’re new here, but the tradition with tables is—”

“Screw tradition. Let’s go. I can make it work.”

“You sound pretty confident,” Gabby said. “Or maybe crazy.”

Why that made her appear so amused, Shane didn’t know. All he knew was that she seemed to like it. She seemed to like
him
.

After the tough time he’d been having lately, that was irresistible.
She
was irresistible. If he didn’t get close to her soon . . . “Rules are made to be broken. Come on.”

He tugged her hand. She resisted. For a gut-wrenching moment, he saw all the sentimental bullshit he’d been thinking about her flash before his eyes. The tickling. The bedhead. The hug and the laundry-day clothes and the sneezy sniffles. He
needed
all those things, damn it! He needed them with her.

Even if it was only for one night.

Especially
if it was only for one night.

Gabby bit her lip. Then, “I’m all in. Let’s go.”

 

 

As Gabriella followed Shane Maresca to that secluded corner booth he’d pointed out, trailing him with her hand in his as they weaved their way through the brewpub’s boisterous crowd, she experienced a moment of sheer, unbelievable giddiness.

The indisputably hottest guy in the place wanted
her
. And she wanted him. Not only in the chaste “let’s get to know one another” way that he seemed to be interested in, but also in the “oh my God, your smile makes me dizzy” way. Now that they’d spoken and he’d passed the initial vetting process—by
not
hazarding a crude 38DD-style guess at her bra size—Gabriella wanted to experience the between-the-sheets version of Shane Maresca. She wanted to know if he did everything as assuredly as he shook hands and led the charge to take over a booth, if he saw everything as a good time waiting to happen, if he really did possess the ability to make her believe in perfect matches.

So far, he was off to a good start.

Thrilled by that fact, Gabriella flashed Pinkie a grin. Her friend gave her a thumbs-up sign, then pantomimed a “call me” signal with the same hand. Seeing that signal—honed during their years of going out together—made Gabriella feel even better.

With that signal, Pinkie meant that Gabriella should give her the scoop on her meet-up with Shane tomorrow—and also that if things went really well Gabriella should text her Shane’s contact details for safekeeping. After all, a girl couldn’t be too careful. Which was (partly) why she’d given Shane a false last name. It was reasonable caution—just like not going straight to her place right now was reasonable caution.

No matter how much Gabriella wanted to know if Shane’s blue-jeaned backside looked as amazing out of his clothes as it did moving in them. Or how much she yearned to press her hands to his thin cotton T-shirt and find out how hard-bodied his chest and shoulders really were. Or how readily she could already picture Shane, with his sun-streaked, brown tousled hair and dazzling smile, lolling in her bed on a sunny morning after.

She bet he’d feel
incredible
against her. Given all the drama in her life lately, Gabriella had been living like a nun for the past few weeks. She’d barely had time to breathe, much less find someone to get frisky with. But apparently all those racy impulses had been building up inside her all this time, because it had taken only one look—and one husky-voiced word from Shane—to make her start imagining all kinds of sexy scenarios. Shane, pressing her against the brewpub’s wall for a long, lingering, hotter-than-hot kiss. Shane, sliding his hand up the delicate fabric of her dress, making her skin feel hot and tingly and ready for more. Shane, whispering a naughty suggestion in her ear . . . and then making that fantasy a reality.

Whew
. If only he hadn’t seemed to know, somehow, that she’d fibbed to him about her name. And about her infamy among the restaurant-industry types who frequented this place, which she’d decided to hide at the last second . . . only to have Shane appear to (maybe) guess it anyway. If only he weren’t such a rules-breaking type with no sense of tradition, he’d have been ideal.

On the other hand, she wasn’t exactly looking for a wedding ring and a couple of rug rats. All she wanted was to forget her troubles and blow off some steam for the night. If Shane could wrangle them a quieter place to get acquainted, then maybe . . .

Yes
. Nearby conversation snapped Gabriella out of her Shane-induced fantasies. By then, he’d already made it happen.

With surprising alacrity and goodwill, the people who’d been occupying the brewpub’s corner booth slid out of it. A couple of them slapped Shane on the back convivially as they left. He nodded with equal bonhomie at them, and then it was done.

Suspiciously, Gabriella looked closely at Shane, expecting to see money change hands. In her experience, cold hard cash was all that would have succeeded in this situation.

Apparently, Shane worked differently. Also, inexplicably. Because one of his hands was still holding hers, so he couldn’t have used that one to dish out a bribe. His other hand was conspicuously empty. Unless he was some kind of magician . . .

The idea kicked off a new fantasy scenario, one where Shane performed erotic sleight of hand with her body, his body, and a whole lot of private time. Dreamily, Gabriella gazed at his hand. It looked dexterous and manly and easily talented enough to make her beg him for another touch, another tickle....